My Kid Could Paint That

Ghirlandaio, Portrait of a Young Girl, 1490

Domenico Ghirlandaio, while not always an exceptional artist, loved to paint and to make people happy. He is said to have accepted every project that came to him in his workshop. He made an effort to complete all works by himself and rarely used the help of his apprentices, one of whom was Michelangelo.

This painting, Portrait of a Young Girl, was painted in 1490 not for a chapel or a famous family but for this young girl. He knew he would not become famous over a work like this, but did not care for fame but instead to please his customers.

Domenico Ghirlandaio was born Domenico di Tommaso di Currado di Doffo Bigordi. Him and his brothers changed their names to Ghirlandaio when they became famous for making hair garlands for young Florentine girls. Ghirlandaio is an adaptation of garland-maker in Italian. This young Florentine girl is wearing one of these hair garlands.

Giovanni Battista Moroni, Portrait of a Young Girl,  1564

A rare portrait of someone so young, this young girl posing in such elegant clothing reflects the image of a young Ghismonda, placed on a pedestal by her obsessive father. In the first story of the fourth day in The Decameron, the possessive Tancredi, Prince of Salerno, kills his daughter’s secret lover because of his lack of rank. The daughter, Ghismonda, in grief, drinks her dead lover's heart blood with poison, and dies. Giovanni’s Portrait of A Young Girl follows the beginning of this same pattern.

Embellished with pearls, the young girl stiffly looks straight at the painter. However her hand’s playfulness lead the reminder of the child behind the parental decoration. Similarly, Ghismonda’s suppression, and overwhelming devotion brought upon her by her father ultimately led her to yield “to a man who was not [her] husband.”  The fact he was of lower rank shows her rebellion against the standard her father unknowingly provided her. It was the elaborating, and smothering of his daughter that Tancredi went wrong. When I see Portrait of a Young Girl, I see a wealthy child forced to pose for hours, in order to add a prop to her family’s household. The child is a prop that the family would be unwilling “to part with,” just as Tancredi feels about Ghismonda 

However, the bond Tancredi holds for his daughter surpasses any usual father daughter love. The obsession stage the Portrait of a Young Girl is in is only but a stage of every father/daughter relationship, and the daughter naturally will grow up, and be her own person-separate from her father’s image. But, Tancredi never outgrows this phase. Tancredi “was so devoted to her that he was in no hurry to make her a second marriage,” because letting her go the first time was hard enough of such a possessive man. Although odds are, the young girl in Moroni's portrait did not drink her dead lover’s heart besprinkled with poison, she probably did rebel against her father’s adornment at one time.

Skin
Curated by Sonia Larbi

Petrus Christus, Portrait of a Young Girl, 1465-1470

When brainstorming ideas for this 4-work collection, I decided to do something less...nautical and more abstract. I tried to think of one unifying thing in all the art I studied in my Renaissance art history class that jumped out at me or took me by surprise. Almost all of my favorite oeuvres this year were of humans. A large majority, portraits. But the portraits and sculpture I singled out were much more than simple depictions of faces or bodies. They had something else, something hard to put in words. In these seven works, light emits from the subjects - instead of just reflecting off of them. The bodies are tactile, realistic, and emotive. Their skin tells the story just as much as their faces. You want to get to know them, talk to them, help them, or befriend them. They draw you in, include you in their drama. They are the human condition in two dimensions. When you look at them, you sink into their skin, become them - even just for one moment. That idea titles this collection.

Here we meet Petrus Christus' Portrait of a Young Girl - a mysterious, piercing, portrait of...a young girl. That's all we get. No background to place her or name to identify her. All we have is her face - in minute detail. The spidery cracks in the delicate paint work to increase her flawlessness. They highlight her perfection and add an air of breakability to the painting - like she's going to fall apart at any moment. Her almond eyes look at you with calm contempt. Her skin glows with an inner radiance only a master could paint. The brush strokes remind me of Durer they're so small. She takes your breath away - and doesn't even care that she's doing it.